Nagarjunasagar spillway gates set to be lifted today

Nagarjunasagar spillway gates set to be lifted today

After a gap of one water year, the crest gates of Nagarjunasagar dam spillway are likely to be lifted on Monday morning, as the storage has crossed 273 tmc ft against its full capacity of 312.5 tmc ft at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

Last year, the spillway discharge was not taken up due to insufficient inflows as the reservoir received only 135.5 tmc ft volume of the flood. Since the formation of Telangana, the crest gates were first operated on September 23 in 2014 but later, there was no spillway discharge for the next three years.

The spillway discharge of flood at Nagarjunasagar was resumed in 2018 as the crest gates were lifted on August 20, on August 12 in 2019, on August 12 in 2020, on August 1 in 2021 and on August 11 in 2022. In 2019, all the 26 gates were lifted for the first time after a gap of 10 years.

Superintending Engineer of the Nagarjunasagar Project (NSP) P.V.S. Nageswar Rao sent a communication to the district authorities of Nalgonda, Suryapet (Telangana), NTR, Krishna, Guntur and Palnadu (Andhra Pradesh) as also the engineers of Pulichintala informing them about the likely commencement of spillway discharge from NSP on Monday morning.

Following the developments at the NSP site on the night of November 29 last year, when the police from AP occupied half of the project bund area including the spillway and the maintenance work too could not be taken up till the intervention of the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) later.

On August 1, the KRMB has asked the Telangana Government (ENC of Irrigation) through a communication to take up operation and maintenance of the NSP dam and also regulation of spillway gates for the monsoon period during the 2024-25 water year. The management of the project was ‘handed over’ to the river board to end the impasse of AP’s ‘occupation’ of the dam despite the denial of Telangana Government.

“At the current rate (at 7 p.m. on Sunday) of inflow at 3.23 lakh cusecs, it would take another 40 hours for the reservoir to get surplus even if the water release to river with power generation (26,000 cusecs), drawals for canal systems (11,833 cusecs) by AP and TG continues,” an engineer of NSP monitoring the flood told The Hindu. He, however, stated that early spillway discharge was being planned as part of the dam safety/flood norms keeping in mind the inflow.